Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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231. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the expected timeline for the planned development of a new national AI strategy. [4065/25]

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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236. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if any consideration has been given to the establishment of a sovereign large language model for Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4119/25]

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 231 and 236 together.

The opportunities presented by Artificial Intelligence are unlike any from previous technological advances, due to the rapid pace of progress, and its potential for transformative impacts on our society and economy, for our collective good. AI presents opportunities for beneficial impacts in many sectors, including in the delivery of public services, healthcare, scientific discovery, sustainability, agriculture, transport, and mobility.

A Refresh of Ireland's National AI Strategy was published in November 2024. This refresh takes account of the significant developments in AI technology and regulation since the original Strategy was published in 2021. As AI is a rapidly evolving technology, my Department will continue to review and refresh the strategy on a periodic basis to reflect this.

The Programme for Government commits to publishing and implementing a new National Digital Strategy to fully realise the economic potential of the digital and AI revolution. This will be coordinated by the Department of the Taoiseach. I consider it a priority to ensure that ambitious measures around AI are prioritised throughout this new Strategy.

As part of implementation of the National AI Strategy, consideration is being given to how to further support the development of EU large language models and language technologies. Ireland is one of twelve EU countries in the Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Innovation Consortium (‘ALT-EDIC’). Údarás na Gaeltachta has undertaken a consultation and mapping exercise across the civil and public service to identify ongoing work in this area. This has identified further corpora and language resources, such as the video, text and sound archive of TG4, RTÉ and broadcast archive of RTÉ RnaG.

This collaboration allows these shared corpora to become the cornerstone of generative AI enabled Irish language and large language models fine-tuned to reflect the Irish experience. Ireland’s priority is to work with partners in other European Union Member States to address any sovereignty concerns at the level of the Single Market through deployment of and access to pooled EU resources.